After Queer Theory: The Limits of Sexual Politics

Is queer theory dead? Through its increasing entanglement with capitalism, James Penney, controversially argues that queer theory has run its course. However, the 'end of queer' should not signal the death of liberatory sexual politics; rather, it presents the occasion to rethink the relation between sexuality and politics. The book makes a critical return to Marxism and psychoanalysis, via Freud and Lacan, and conducts a critical examination of queer theory's most famous proponents, including Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. In doing so, Penney insists that the way to implant sexuality in the field of political antagonism is - paradoxically - to abandon the exhausted premise of a politicised sexuality. He argues that by wresting sexuality from the dead end of identity politics, it can be opened up to a universal emancipatory struggle beyond the reach of capitalism's powers of commodification.